Let me know if you understand anything about me from this PS.- Too much metaphor?- Is it clear?- Scrap Batman and give up on this.- I'm looking at you CanadianWolf!!!

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Back home, on a shelf in the living room are albums filled with photographs of my childhood. In one album are images of me wearing a papier-mâché cowl, holding a flashlight with a Bat symbol taped onto the lens. Like many kids, I wanted to be Batman. Batman was cool. He was rich; he could infiltrate government and financial institutions inside three keystrokes; he invented crazy gadgets; and coolest of all – he was the “World’s Greatest Detective.” Now I’ve come to realize that while Batman is extraordinary, I cannot nor do I want to be Batman or even be like Batman. Batman is idealized justice regardless of the law, a justice that adheres to only one point of view: his. I want to be better than Batman. I want to be a lawyer.

As I grew older, I developed a deeper understanding of my childhood hero. Batman’s parents were murdered when he was young, leaving him a vast inheritance. He could have done anything with it, yet every night Batman exposed himself to the dangers of the city. Money didn’t matter to Batman, only a passion for what he believed was right, and he acted on that belief without hesitation. I no longer admired Batman purely for his gadgets or abilities or his wealth. I admired Batman because he was selfless, because he had conviction. He represented an unrelenting commitment to justice. To me, Batman became an ideal.

I approached college with an open mind, but law school had been my goal since junior high despite my having only a vague idea of what that really meant. Becoming Batman was impossible, but I thought that by becoming a lawyer I could still embody his dedication to justice. So I joined a pre-law professional fraternity the spring of my first year. The group was small, but extraordinarily diverse. We always recruited ambitious people from different cultures and different majors, who each had their own political beliefs and life philosophies. It came as no surprise then that debates escalated over issues like constitutional bylaws or our recruitment process. We resolved these disputes through discussion and consensus, something Batman would never do. Batman didn’t need to know nor did he care whether his actions were constitutionally permissible. In his mind, Batman knew exactly what was right and what was wrong. The beauty of Batman’s justice was in its simplicity.

For a while I thought I knew the difference between right and wrong. When the fraternity elected me as Director of Recruitment, I sought to make our recruitment process more uniform. Though we were a pre-law professional fraternity, we had to maintain a balance between the two: professionalism versus fraternalism. I chose to focus on the latter. With this in mind, I created the fraternity’s first recruitment manual. The document outlined every process and tradition, but infused them with my emphasis on brotherhood and family. Satisfied, I resigned my position to study in Rome. When I returned, I learned that no one followed my manual. I was livid. I felt betrayed. I brought it up in meeting, but discussion ended quickly. They told me the manual was too rigid, that it deemphasized the subtlety of an interview handshake and the delicacy of professional demeanor, leaving no room for my successors to make the position their own. I realized the manual imposed my own vision of the fraternity through a self-righteous belief that my way is the only way, regardless of other, legitimate approaches. In the end, I was wrong.

Essentially, I had taken a Batman approach in writing the manual. Batman stood up for what he thought was right, for what he thought was justice. He enforces this justice regardless of the only moral code people agree to follow – the law. Batman’s world is unrealistic, a world where justice is on his terms alone. I’ve grown to understand that this is a childish fantasy. Ultimately, Batman is a vigilante who conveniently ignores the truth: the world is painted with far more colors than his black and white canvas. It’s easy to go through life this way, ignoring the merits of other views. That way you’re always right. Yet the beauty of the law is in its inclusivity. We all agree to follow the law, and when we don’t agree, we change it, but not by ourselves. We need the help of lawyers to listen and give us voice. As a lawyer, I will be better than Batman – I will listen. I want justice, but it has to be everyone’s justice, not just mine.

You will either get an adcomm who likes batman and who gives this a fair shake, in which case I'd say that adcomm will probably consider the statement mediocre, or will you will get an adcomm who doesn't know or care for batman and will dismiss this PS as rambling garbage.

Your theme is good, but the delivery harms your image since it raises maturity & judgment issues. This is not an effective way to sell yourself to law school admissions officers. This personal statement attempts to show a transition from the world of comic book heroics to intellectual graduate school study without any intervening maturation. The result is a personal statement that lacks credibility even though your observations are valid.

Last edited by CanadianWolf on Wed Oct 27, 2010 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Depending on your numbers, I say keep it. I mean, don't send this to Harvard if that's your dream school and a major reach. But if you send this out to a broad range of a well-targeted schools, I think it'll be pretty effective.

I'm probably not the best judge of these PSs. The truth is, I can't stand them. But I actually read this one. Cool. Needs a ton of work. But cool.

I will edit this more carefully after you revise a few times. First, don't use contractions (i.e., it's). They're too informal. Second, strive for sentence variety. Third, there are a few grammatical errors and some consistency issues. For example, there is a dependent clause staring with "but" that should not be preceded by a comma. Also, you use an introductory phrase with the word "while" (I'm too lazy to find it). Although a comma after that phrase is discretionary (according to the usage manual for my Law Review, anyway), I would add a comma because you use commas to separate introductory temporal phrases earlier in the essay.

Last edited by JazzOne on Wed Oct 27, 2010 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Was Batman really that important to your life? I don't know, I feel like someone reading this would think it was a failed attempt at being creative and different. I loved Dragon Ball Z growing up, but Goku being a good dude never impacted me in life and I never made decisions with him in mind. Seems unrealistic.

I've played with the Batman motif for a week or two now and it seems that many TLSers and a few of my friends continue to think that this is immature. While I could see their perspective (haha, get it?) I thought that by using a metaphor that actually meant something to me in a more intellectual way, I could convey something, particularly a kind of maturation from a childish, naive idealization of an idol and the later realization that that idol was something I didn't want to strive for anymore. Hence, a gradual development from Batman is cool, Batman is justice, Batman is not everyone's justice.

But it continues to bother people, and if it bothers young people, then it's probably going to bother an adcomm.

I am of course pretty crestfallen that it's come to this point. But I guess it's time to give up on it.

aesis wrote:, I cannot nor do I want to be Batman or even be like Batman. Batman is idealized justice regardless of the law, a justice that adheres to only one point of view: his. I want to be better than Batman. I want to be a lawyer.